The body of an elderly woman who had been dead for more than a year and mummified in an underground by her son, who wanted to continue receiving social assistance from her, was discovered in Tyrol, Austrian police said on Thursday.
“Investigations revealed that this 89-year-old woman died in June 2020 and the 66-year-old man retained her body to continue benefiting from the aid,” security forces said in a statement. a statement.
The suspect, who lived with his mother near Innsbruck (Austria), admitted during his detention that he had frozen his body to make sure it would not smell of death and then absorbed the body fluids with bandages.
“He then covered the body with cat litter and finally the corpse was mummified,” agent Helmut Cufler, head of the police unit specializing in social benefits fraud, told ORF public television.
When his brother visited the home and asked him about his mother, who suffered from dementia before he died and had few people beyond his children, the suspect replied that he had been admitted to a hospital.
The aid was received through a postal check and when a new postman asked to see the beneficiary, her son refused. This made him suspicious and denounced the facts.
Finally, they found the mummy last Saturday.
Police charge the suspect with a felony of state aid fraud and concealment of a corpse.